Mayo--Did He Peak Too Soon?



gntlmn

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Jul 28, 2003
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It seems that Mayo is not making the statement we expected him to make in the Pyrenees. Do we have reason to believe he is suffering from crash injuries? Did he peak too early up Mont Ventoux and then lose his form in the 3 weeks preceeding the Tour de France?

What's wrong with Mayo?
 
I think mayo has found the pace pretty hard going in the last 48 hours. I remember reading an article in cycling weekly about the dauphine and how mayo thrashed Lance and how Lance was "a little worried". Personally I think it was all part of the plan for Lance not to win.....

USPS are setting a pretty fast pace and we have seen a few riders quit.....
 
Sean Kelly commentating on Eurosport today said as much.
He thought that Mayo's performance in the Dauphine - where kelly reckoned he was at 100% - has had a detrimental affect on his performance in the TDF.
 
limerickman said:
Sean Kelly commentating on Eurosport today said as much.
He thought that Mayo's performance in the Dauphine - where kelly reckoned he was at 100% - has had a detrimental affect on his performance in the TDF.

Yeah I heard him say that. Pretty good commentating today.

Limerickman - Hows yer sausage(s) doing?!
;)
 
steve007 said:
Yeah I heard him say that. Pretty good commentating today.

Limerickman - Hows yer sausage(s) doing?!
;)

it's gotten out of hand over there - hasn't it ?
 
Sure has. Nothing suprises me where cycling is concerned. Alot of crazy people hanging around today.
 
He may have peaked early, but that would not have put him so far out as he is now. He must be hurting from the crash before the pave' more than most think. Also there is the psychological impact of your tour mostly over before you even get to put in a show in your backyard in the Pyrenees. A shame really, as most of the field is now decimated and Lance's main contender will be Basso and Basso alone. With Basso not a real threat in the last ITT unless Lance has a major misshap it's over.
 
davidbod said:
He may have peaked early, but that would not have put him so far out as he is now. He must be hurting from the crash before the pave' more than most think. Also there is the psychological impact of your tour mostly over before you even get to put in a show in your backyard in the Pyrenees. A shame really, as most of the field is now decimated and Lance's main contender will be Basso and Basso alone. With Basso not a real threat in the last ITT unless Lance has a major misshap it's over.

The injury theory I might buy. That might be it. But the psychological impact theory I just can't because he had opportunities for stage wins, which are coveted by every rider in the Tour, and Mayo showed no ability to keep up in the mountains where he supposedly has great talent. He was spoken by many as being the biggest threat to Armstrong because of the possible huge gaps he might open in the mountains. The opposite was true.

If he's hurting from injury, I hope he gets better. It is always fun to watch a climbing prodigy.
 
Mayo's problems are not related to any physical injuries from his fall in Stage 3.

Procycling reports:

""I just felt a terrible lack of energy and couldn’t go on,” Mayo explained after the stage. “There are times when you really want to leave it all behind. In the end I didn’t quit thanks to my team-mates, who really encouraged me and convinced me to continue. I also thought about the thousands of Basque fans who had come over here. “I don’t know what is wrong, **I don’t have any physical problems, I’m not suffering any consequences of the crashes in the first week.** I’m simply not going well. I am going to continue but while I feel like this I don’t really have any concrete objective.”

http://www.procycling.com/news.aspx?ID=291
 
musette said:
Mayo's problems are not related to any physical injuries from his fall in Stage 3.

Procycling reports:

""I just felt a terrible lack of energy and couldn’t go on,” Mayo explained after the stage. “There are times when you really want to leave it all behind. In the end I didn’t quit thanks to my team-mates, who really encouraged me and convinced me to continue. I also thought about the thousands of Basque fans who had come over here. “I don’t know what is wrong, **I don’t have any physical problems, I’m not suffering any consequences of the crashes in the first week.** I’m simply not going well. I am going to continue but while I feel like this I don’t really have any concrete objective.”

http://www.procycling.com/news.aspx?ID=291

Sounds like a beaten man. Ahh, the rigors of the Tour are no small feat...
 
musette said:
Mayo's problems are not related to any physical injuries from his fall in Stage 3.

Procycling reports:

""I just felt a terrible lack of energy and couldn’t go on,” Mayo explained after the stage. “There are times when you really want to leave it all behind. In the end I didn’t quit thanks to my team-mates, who really encouraged me and convinced me to continue. I also thought about the thousands of Basque fans who had come over here. “I don’t know what is wrong, **I don’t have any physical problems, I’m not suffering any consequences of the crashes in the first week.** I’m simply not going well. I am going to continue but while I feel like this I don’t really have any concrete objective.”

http://www.procycling.com/news.aspx?ID=291

Mayo looked bunched during yesterdays stage.
Did you see Euskatel making him get back on his bike ?
Even an Iles Belares rider grabbed his shirt and pulled him on the bike when he was trying to stop.
 
I wonder if Mayo will fare better in later Tours by staying in the game now. Surely a DNF must not set well with a rider psychologically, as long as he is not having health problems. It might be different if he were 21-25, but he's 26. He ought to be about in his prime.
 
His defeat on Stages 12/13 must have been particularly devasting, if Stage 3's lost time was not bad enough. To have problems in the Pyrenees when one is considered an expert climber and one is closest to the Basque region.... Then Zubeldia exits, presumably with some health problems.
 
musette said:
His defeat on Stages 12/13 must have been particularly devasting, if Stage 3's lost time was not bad enough. To have problems in the Pyrenees when one is considered an expert climber and one is closest to the Basque region.... Then Zubeldia exits, presumably with some health problems.

Oh yeah. We forgot to mention on this entire post that it was Mayo's team that started with 8 riders instead of 9 in this year's TdF. Remember it was 21 teams, 188 riders instead of 189 because one of Mayo's riders flunked a drug test right before the Tour and then his team was not allowed to replace him? This was a fair rule, but we have not mentioned that this weakened him from the beginning. How much this might have hurt him is hard to tell. Perhaps he would have been able to recover on the cobblestone stage if he had had one more helper. I don't know. But it still seems the 38 minutes time he lost on stage 13 in the Pyrenees cannot be accounted for by having an incomplete team. If he were as dominant a climber as we expected, he should have been able to draft other teams' riders as he moved onward and upward.
 
Like Hamilton, I never rated Mayo as a threat on overall GC.
But his failure to fire is very strange especially in the Pyrennees.
I never expected Euskatel to do well in the time trial but to fall away as he did in the mountains is quite frankly unbelievable.

Eurosport said that he had a sore knee.
I think his morale was sapped - I think his problem is more psychological
than physical in this TDF.
 
As members know, the context for this is everybody having said after the Mount Ventoux ITT loss by LA to Mayo and Hamilton this year that Mayo was a serious contender for the GC. Mayo is an audacious, proud rider. And he probably felt, after this win at Alpe d'Huez last year and the Mount Ventoux ITT, that he had a realistic chance to win Alpe d'Huez ITT and possibly even win GC if LA were somehow weak. I never thought Mayo could win over LA in the GC, unless age had dissipated LA's abilities (obviously not the case).
 
Bruyneel on Mayo, from the LA fan website's transcript of press conference recently conducted:

"Q: What was the impact of the Dauphine Libre race in June? A: I was concerned about the form of Iban Mayo and Tyler Hamilton. I hoped that Mayo could not hold that form. He went too fast in the month of June – he is a very ambitious rider. But it takes a lot of energy to do what he did in June.”

http://www.thepaceline.com/members/higgs_item.aspx?cid=406
 

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